Sabbath Devotional: Election Night, a Foam Cannon, and the Miracle of Cana

I was recently reminded of election night. I didn't cry, but I felt like it. For the first time in my life as a voter, every single human or initiative that I had voted for failed. Badly. I recall feeling so alienated from my community, adrift amid a sea of ideologies that were now measurably and by a wide majority different from mine.

We live in an incredibly remote valley in Southeast Idaho. There are miles between every home. I voted in an 800 square foot non-denominational church house. My child attends a two-room elementary school. The population is very limited, especially compared to the densely packed neighborhood in Boston where we moved from. So not fitting in feels potentially high stakes. There just aren’t that many friendships to choose from. And we do have friends in the valley. In fact, I like the people here enormously. But laying in my bed on November 5 with the quilt up to my chin, I wondered what I was doing in this place. How could I go and interact amicably with a people who had just overwhelmingly communicated, “we don't want your preferences here”?

Which brings me to this weekend. To celebrate the first week of school, we rented a bubble foam cannon and set it up at the back of said two room schoolhouse with a stack of pizzas, a vegetable tray, and grapes. I sent group texts and my husband posted on the valley's Facebook group inviting anyone who wanted to attend. Then, like anyone throwing a party, we worried whether anyone would come.

They did. Almost all the families in our little community came. They brought their kids and towels and popsicles and a Bluetooth speaker and cash to help cover the rental. They blasted Kids Bop on while the children (laminated in a coating of bubbles) shrieked and tumbled around between the foam pile and the playground. They held my infant and chatted and laughed with me. I felt incredibly connected to the humans of this valley, so opposite of how I felt in November. 

I was talking with a friend recently who mused “I think community building counts as service work.” Reflecting on the bitter effects of toxic polarization, isolation, and loneliness, that felt immediately true. Community work is service work. But I think it is more than that. I think it is sacred work. 

Christ's first miracle wasn't healing blindness or feeding the hungry. It was a remedy for a different kind of ailment, food to satisfy another appetite. He turned dirty pots of water into wine so a community could rejoice together a little longer. Community building, more or less:

Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So, they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.

Jesus saw people who were communing and blessed them to commune a while longer. His first miracle was bringing people together and holding them there. It was a miracle of community, of rejoicing, of abundance. 

Follow me, he says, do as I have done. And we must. Against the thrashing winds of societal atomization that would blow us further and further apart, we must learn to bring the new wine, to sit a little longer with the humans around us, to laugh together, to rejoice together, to worship and weep and love and commune together in and through our differences.

I acknowledge that there are times when your capacity is likely truly depleted. The cistern empty, your well exhausted, and even dirty water is more than you have to bring to the table. If that is you now, I am sorry. But I also do truly believe that Jesus stands with us in our weeping and our rejoicing. He is bringing the new barrels, and he has invited everyone to the feast. There will be enough wine to extend the celebration for a thousand years. And someday, we will sit together and drink in the profound presence of Jesus Christ, his glory manifested in our love for him and for one another. 

But until that day, we have ward parties to attend, Sunday dinners to cook, PTA meetings to volunteer at. We have talent shows, cookie deliveries, game nights, service projects, field trips, food drives, and foam cannons. Insofar as these build community, Christ's community, the family of God, these efforts matter. These are an actual effort against the tyranny of loneliness, polarization, and despair. And I don't mean to sound sacrilegious at all when I say these, too, are sacred works.

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Art by J. Kirk Richards

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Sarah Perkins is the peaceful root director at Mormon Women for Ethical Government.